


when the show's over

by khattikeri



Series: director's cut [2]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Spoilers, aka my "what if shuichi got out of the rubble and saw kiibo before he destroyed the cage" au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:15:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25684900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/khattikeri/pseuds/khattikeri
Summary: “You’re a littletooeager to die, Saihara-kun,” Kiibo smiles at him ruefully. “Don’t you think?”
Relationships: K1-B0/Saihara Shuichi
Series: director's cut [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1862407
Comments: 12
Kudos: 71





	when the show's over

**Author's Note:**

> This is a companion piece/sequel to 'between pause and play', but can be read as a standalone. Please do give the first fic a go if you're curious though, it's not all that long and I feel pretty proud of it. Unlike the former though, this fic is rated T only because there's an f-bomb, and isn't NEARLY as poetic imo.
> 
> I was listening to + inspired to write certain lines by [Everdream by Epic Soul Factory](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCMXO9sBIcU) and [mafumafu's cover of Hated By Life Itself.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq8r1ZTma08) Melancholic, but hopeful, as Chapter 6 saiibo is meant to be. Give them both a listen while reading! The links are in the song titles.

_So you’ve chosen death,_ the reaper in his mind tells him. _You’ve chosen mass-suicide to spite the audience._

 _I have,_ Saihara thinks in reply. Feels it, deep within his heart. 

(with five failures on his track record and so many kids like him dead for nothing,

it’s obvious to him why he would harden his heart and choose to die

and still have no regrets.)

The final execution will destroy them all, he thinks, a nuclear armageddon on everything that made his life hell. He feels vengeant, repentant, wants this terrible graveyard of an academy to be annihilated and never seen again so that he can mourn his friends in peace and move on, without having to settle with the terrible truth that the place can and will be used again.

Truth.

It makes him want to laugh. There was no audition. They were just kidnapped teenagers from across the country. There is no grand meta, no clever insight or twist. Team Danganronpa was full of nonsense and Shirogane is a goddamn liar, more than the Ouma he grew to lament, more than the Akamatsu or Momota he had come to love.

It was poetic, and yet--

 _It’s not poetic,_ Saihara suddenly wants to scream into the endless confines of the cage. _It’s not poetic. The pain in my heart is not your fucking poetry._ Resignation boils over into anger; justified grief unto justified rage. 

(how dare you call the deaths of the people i came to love fiction?

how dare you use us as an entertaining means to a philosophy?

how dare you, how dare you, 

how could you?)

Saihara shares a glance with Harukawa and Yumeno, and is at least comforted by the fact that he isn’t the only one of them who is broken.

Shirogane looks as dismayed as any evil would be upon defeat, but there’s an oddly human angle to her when she looks truly disappointed. Somehow, that one expression gave her more humanity, in Saihara’s eyes, than anything he’d seen from her in weeks.

(but of course, that petty, flighty selfishness is what makes her ordinary

instead of a larger-than-life villain a la Enoshima Junko.)

At least there’s Kiibo.

There always was Kiibo, Saihara thinks nonchalantly as the rocks and shrapnel come hurtling down, and likens it to the end of days. Dinosaurs must’ve felt like this; the end of an era, the end of all life. But dinosaurs didn’t have the knowledge that life continued after death-- it simply was, it simply did. Life persisted even without needless, mushy, easily-taken-out-of-context things like hope.

Kiibo was funny, was serious, was sweet. He always put in effort and helped no matter how hard push came to shove. Never once did Kiibo lie to him, even to be kind. Not like Akamatsu, not like Ouma, not like Momota. 

Saihara feels almost happy he wasn’t making the same mistake, loving a friend like this. It’s okay. He’ll be okay in his final moments. He’s prepared.

(i don’t need dreams or even a tomorrow,

because we’ll all die one day, right?

if my friends all died with no preparation,

i can do it with some, right?)

He’s rotten, Saihara thinks of himself, rotten like autumn leaves, shriveled up and soon to be cloaked in black. Not quite dead like winter, but certainly not alive like summer either; he is the living dead, the last one, the ‘Shuichi’, and he--

\--why hasn’t he been crushed yet?

Saihara opens his eyes and is met with darkness, but he’s not dumb enough to believe in an afterlife. He pushes against the rubble surrounding and squints his eyes at the sky, wind whipping against his clothes and hair.

“Kiibo-kun?!” 

The shout wrenches itself from his throat, more horrified than when they discovered the corpse under the hydraulic press and he’d believed it was Momota, more anguished than when he’d watched Akamatsu get strangled, more, more, _more,_ his emotions a turbulent ocean overflowing a teaspoon-sized vessel.

Kiibo looks back at him and pulls his mask down, glowing gently against the death and destruction around him.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Saihara yells at him. His brows are knit, his lips are pulled back in a grimace, teeth grit, and all he can think is--

(‘this isn’t right.’)

“You’re a little _too_ eager to die, Saihara-kun,” Kiibo smiles at him ruefully. “Don’t you think?”

What is he talking about? Is he out of his _mind?_

Saihara isn’t Shirogane with a fetish for murder mysteries; he’s not Ouma with a penchant for convoluted plans instead of turning right two degrees to do something with common sense either. He’s Saihara, practical and tired and absolutely not of the mind to be used again for some half-baked _hope._

(you know me; quiet, jaded, faded,

why won’t you let me wither away?)

He’s not a character. He’s not a toy. So why--

“I know you said you’d have us all die,” Kiibo says, smile radiant and hopeful and everything Saihara fought against. “But the cameras aren’t here anymore.”

His heart is as full as it is empty, an infinite paradox in and of itself, and yet, Saihara somehow feels like he understands.

(k1-b0 is arguably more human than any of them.)

“When you’re all out for good,” Kiibo is still smiling, gently, kindly, and what kills Saihara the most about it is that it isn’t a gentle lie smattered with coughed-up blood and Luminaries of Stars; isn’t a kind lie full of mischievous half-truths; isn’t a final bastion of encouragement to hide a sinister shot put ball plan; isn’t a last stand to continue a series that shouldn’t even exist and honestly probably doesn’t actually exist in the real world, _**damn it all to hell--!**_ “I want you to live.”

Even with debris flying and wind howling in his ears, it’s like the world stops with that sentence.

Saihara doesn’t cry. He can’t.

But his face scrunches up, unwilling to let go nonetheless.

“Why?” Saihara’s voice cracks. His fists are sweaty and weak, too clammy to even clench, but he’s so, so--

“I mean it when I say I love and care about you, Saihara-kun,” Kiibo says, pressing his lips into a line. “You’ve suffered… but you deserve to live on and make peace.”

His eyes are shining; far from technologic and hardly camera-like, but with something like fondness, friendship, affection, faith, trust, love--

(hope.)

“What about you?” Saihara demands, sucking in a harsh breath. “I love you too, you know! Don’t--” And what does Saihara know? For some reason, his eyes are blurry with tears again, event though he thought he wasn’t capable of grief anymore. “Don’t leave me. Don’t say _I_ can’t die and then sacrifice yourself to do the same.”

A grim reaper who grieves. A detective who laments the criminals he sentences. A boy who just wants neither hope nor despair...

“Maybe we’ll meet again,” Kiibo smiles cryptically, and then pushes a button on his mainframe. “On the other side.”

The power-up noise seizes Saihara in a panic. “Kiibo-kun?”

“Tell Harukawa-san and Yumeno-san I love them too,” Kiibo breathes. “Here I go.”

“Kiibo-kun--!”

“Living despite death will fulfill you more than dying to spite life,” Kiibo says with an air of finality that weighs them both down, too _real_ to be a flashy, made-for-television spectacle. “I love you, Shuichi. _Live on.”_

And then Kiibo flies off, a comet soaring into the sky, bittersweet and burning bright like a dying star as he shatters, and then it rains glass shards and beautiful, gorgeous explosive light.

(k1-b0 is the Star and saihara his Judgement, watching, waiting, scales of reckoning in hand--

and together they create The World.)

It’s terribly childish, but Saihara thinks of dinosaurs again, watching the end of days. Only now, Saihara thinks that maybe some of the creatures present did know that life would go on-- without despair, without hope, persisting forward.

It really is the end.

Saihara can’t stop staring, can’t stop the flushed awe rising in his cheeks, can’t stop the swell of pride in his chest, can’t stop his tears as he claws over his heart.

But he can’t stop smiling either. 

=

(when the show’s over, i want you to keep your chin up.

i want you to smile so wide it crinkles your eyes.

and even if you reject hope and despair,

~~i want you to live, shuichi.)~~

-

**Author's Note:**

> It's interesting. Over the few hours I wrote this, I think I've reconciled with V3's epilogue and Kiibo letting the three of them live-- rather than saddle them with hope or despair, he gives them a chance and tells them to persist in moving forward.
> 
> I think I like this interpretation of it.
> 
> Comments and kudos are appreciated! For more saiibo content or danganronpa content in general, check out my tumblr and twitter (both @khattikeri).


End file.
